I am about to start a low level (2) campaign. The world isn’t Pathfinder but the rules are. My idea for a world was that it’s primarily post apocalyptic. One day X years ago a black tower appeared in some remote corner of the world and all the plant life started to die. The blight kept growing and growing until now it covers the world and only a few pockets of farm land are left. Each pocket of land left unblighted has some sort of protection keeping it safe but the Blight is slowly winning.
The players want to play evil characters and I said that is fine as long at they work as a group. I decided the players are the latest generation of destined heroes. The campaign starts on their coming of age. I am pulling dragon marks from eberron and slapping a tweeked version on to the characters to mark them as the destined ones.
When they get to the tower (hopefully level 10 or so) they will find that he life force of this world is being drained out to sustain several other worlds. They have the choice to go to another lush world, save this world, or stay here and let this world die to save others.
So now I am looking for plot and plot hook ideas to help move the characters through the world on their destined journey to the tower. Any ideas?
Well, in a post-apocalyptic world, battles for resources would be pretty frequent. The adventurers could be tasked with protecting/recovering/stealing precious resource A (food/water). Seeing as they're evil, maybe they're tasked with raiding a rival stronghold for food. The rival stronghold could be evil as well, if you don't really want them essentially kicking harmless peasants while they're down; perhaps a fortress populated by orcs/bugbears/goblins living well on ill-gotten spoils? ("Those should be OUR ill-gotten spoils!" cry the evil adventurers.)
The evil party could easily justify working together to strengthen their position against a hostile world. Going solo when there's little to nothing out there to sustain you isn't as good an option as survival in numbers. You could make something similar to Kingmaker, where the party is attempting to build and strengthen a stronghold. It gives them a reason to work together towards a common goal, even if that common goal is conquering and oppressing every squallid, backwater shanty village of survivors they can find.
If the world at large is aware that the black tower is somehow responsible for the blight, the party could be looking for ways to circumvent or even topple the tower, having them scrounge for ancient lore, powerful artifacts, or potent allies. In the meantime, they have to protect their own precarious position from marauders, rivals, and the occasional enthusiastic do-gooder.
Lots of options for getting the players moving :)
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Aside form being an inter-dimensional Galactus, does the tower do anything else? Release minions of some kind to protect it(proabably constructs of some kind, check out the movie 9), maybe send them off on 'harvesting' missions? Is there only one tower?
It's always harder with evil PCs. There's pretty much one kind of good, but there's lots of different kinds of evil. You need to find out which 'evil' motivates them.
Greed?
Hunger for power?
General hate of the world around them?
Adherence to evil religion?
Nihilism?
Each has a different hook, and knowing what motivates your PCs will help you formulate those hooks. Otherwise you run into a situation where you drop a hook and your PCs choose (rightly) not to take it because it's not something their characters would do. So ask them each individually what motivates their PC before you get started.
Aside form being an inter-dimensional Galactus, does the tower do anything else?
I was wondering the same thing. When I read the OP, my mind went straight to Krull. Speaking of which, have the tower move around on a regular basis could make things interesting.
It’s Galactus. It doesn’t really do anything but the creatures that are left on the land it has blighted get mutated.
Castle Anthrax
Known for corporeal punishments for the wicked and naughty.